And Waters Near
by Kira
Summary: Driving through Arizona, the brothers encounter a ghost that picks at old wounds but helps to reconcile past wishes and present gifts.


Written for the spn50states challenge on LJ. My state? Arizona.

Decided to do some experimenting with tense and flashbacks. I had fun writing this story, and tried to include everything; banter, whumping, a little bit of Sam/Jess, my man, pre-series Dean -- is a fun little story and I hope you enjoy.

* * *

**And Waters Near**

_"And gentle winds and waters near, make music to the lonely ear."_  
"Parisina", Byron

It's raining in the desert when the Impala chugs, lurches, and rolls to a stop on Interstate 40. They're 35 miles from Flagstaff with a Navajo reservation on one side and a whole lot of empty desert on the other. Later, they'll laugh about the coincidence of the nearby canyon being named Canyon Diablo, but for now, the river cutting through pale red is just a river and the car's not moving.

A few bewildered seconds pass before either occupant does anything, says anything. Dean looks dumbly at the gauges, hands still poised on the wheel at ten and two, the pitter-patter of rain dancing across the roof in staccato notes. The radio continues to play, the wipers swish back and forth across the slick windshield; headlights illuminate the vast, empty desert of the Colorado Basin and the Interstate that stretches into oblivion.

It doesn't make any sense.

"Hey, Dean? I don't know much about cars, but we're probably out of gas, right?" Sam glances over from the passenger seat, all folded limbs and tired movement.

His question elicits a growl. "We're not out of gas," Dean answers. "You think I've been driving this baby across the country for a year without paying attention to gas? We've got a good 50 miles before we'll have to fill her up again."

Leather groans as Sam leans over to check the gauge for himself.

Dean gives him a light punch in the arm. "What, you don't trust me?"

"I trust you, not the car."

"This car's sheltered your ass for years," Dean shoots back. "I'm going to take a look. Stay here so the rain doesn't muss your hair."

He's halfway out into the rain before Sam laughs and leans over to shout, "You're such an asshole, Dean." The door slams shut and it's just Sam and the sweet musings of Supertramp left inside.

-

Dean hit the hood release on his way out of the car, and ignores the rain sliding down his neck, pooling along the collar of his t-shirt while he pushes the hood open and levers it with a rusted support rod.

Raised, the long hood of the Impala offers some shelter from the rain, but it really does the trick blocking Dean's view of his brother sitting smugly inside the dry car. He'd thought road trips with Sam would become tolerable when he grew out of his moody teens, but college has only made him moody _and_ mature and fuck if Dean will survive more than a week stuck with the kid.

He loves his brother, really does, but siblings can just get so _annoying_.

He'll guilt-trip Sam later about having to stand out in the rain – alone -- to fix the car. For now, he enjoys the warm desert rain and bends down to take a look at the engine.

The serpentine belt isn't snaking its way through the engine's innards, which means the car isn't going anywhere – and the battery isn't going to last forever. That's the least of their problems because that 3" thick piece of rubber controls the timing of the whole damn thing and they're not going anywhere until a new one's humming along.

Dean slams a hand down on the frame and hangs his head in frustration. Some other part he could fix, or at least patch up well enough to get them to Flagstaff. Anything other than a belt, that he has no way to rig or patch on the side of the road.

"Just fuckin' great," he mutters, pulling the support rod free. The hood slams down and reveals Sam watching intently, waiting patiently for an explanation. Dean cups his hands around his mouth and shouts, "Serpentine belt," only to have Sam frown – damn kid never did fully grasp the inner workings of a basic engine.

Shaking his head, Dean rounds the car and has a hand on the door handle when he hears the lullaby his mother used to sing to him before bed, and his head snaps in its direction when he recognizes her voice.

--

Sam barely hears something about a belt through the rain; he shrugs and notes the way Dean brushes him off. It rubs Sam the wrong way. Even though his car knowledge is severely lacking, he wants to know what's going on, to be given a chance to learn. Four years and this is what he comes back to? Need to know, shut out even when Dad's AWOL?

He formulates some sort of witty response, tone colored by shades of resentment, and gets ready to deliver it –

-- when Dean stops short of opening the door and turns to something far off in the dark desert Sam can't see.

Annoyed, impatient, and a bit alarmed, Sam leans over the driver's seat and rolls down the window. "Hey, what is it?"

When Sam looks back on his life ten or fifteen years from now, reminiscing with a wife or child or even his brother, he'll say one of the time he was most frightened was on the side of Interstate 40 in the middle of a desert rainstorm. Why? They'll ask. What was so scary about the desert that night?

And he'll tell them it had nothing to do with the desert or the rain or the stalled car. It was the way his brother turned to answer him, or, more specifically, the expression on his face. He'll tell them Dean didn't show his emotions back then, and if he did, they were usually of anger or joy. Because those can't be seen as weaknesses. But that night, when Dean turned and looked at Sam through the open window, hair matted to his head by rain, he appeared so lost and heartbroken, Sam could do nothing but look away.

That, he'll say, was the wrong thing to do.

-

When Sam finally turns back, Dean's no longer at the window.

He panics – coyotes live out in the desert, coyotes and wild animals and psycho killers all waiting for someone to get stranded out here where there isn't a wink of civilization for miles in any direction. Rain falls into the car, spray coating the seat and steering wheel; Sam hurries to crank the window closed and falls back into his seat.

From the corner of his eye, he catches Dean in the side mirror; the trunk lurches open, and inside the car, the sounds of Dean rummaging through the hodgepodge of contents are magnified, large chunks of plastic and metal clunking around until he's found what he's looking for. The Impala sways with the force used to shut the trunk – being rough with any part of the car is strange, out of the ordinary.

A beam of light swings into the mirror, blinding him for a moment. When he can see again, a few blinks later, the light Dean holds is pointed away from the highway, into the wide, empty desert.

"What the hell?" Sam asks the empty car. He moves to open his door, thinks twice, and grabs the keys from the ignition.

Without the keys turned, the headlights shut off. Without their illumination, the desert's a gaping black hole swallowing his brother and the tiny beam of light he's sweeping back and forth as he walks; Dean moves as if nothing has changed.

Sam shouts into the rain. "Dean, where the hell are you going?"

Walking along the highway, he'd understand. Looking away when Dean was so open – a rare occurrence like this rain – could have pissed him off enough to seek solitude by going for help on his own. But walking into the empty beyond with no explanation? Dean's actions prompt lessons shoved aside but not forgotten on the different types of possession, of mind control.

"Dean!" he tries again, running flat out through the rain. The moisture dampens his lungs – they burn from the exertion; he breathes faster and faster until his outstretched arm is in range of Dean. His fingers brush the cotton of Dean's soaked t-shirt, then grasp it. Both fall with the inertia of Sam's sprint, rolling and tumbling to the clay sand saturated with unexpected rain. Water pools on the surface, hard ground unable to absorb any more. The brothers splash through puddles, finally rolling to a stop, panting as droplets hit their warm skin.

"What the fuck, Sam?" growls Dean. Nearby, the flashlight, knocked free during the tumble, spins to a stop, the narrow beam shooting off to light a nearby saguaro cactus, wide fin arms monster-like as it dominates the landscape. Dean grows larger than life, crossing to scoop up the light.

"What the hell yourself. What are you doing out here?" Sam demands. They're both covered in pasty red sand, the mixture thick and heavy on their soaked clothes, making it hard to move.

"I – just – " Dean scratches the back of his head, taking in their surroundings, as confused as Sam. "Going for help?"

"Without telling me?" Sam asks, brushing past the shared unease. Worry turns to anger, and he swings to a seated position while continuing. "You were going to walk all the way to the nearest town – which, by the way, is twenty miles in the other direction?"

Dean frowns, looking at the flashlight in his hand. "When you say it like that…" His words trail off like he's listening to something; his head cocks to the side, his face falls, and even through the rain, Sam can see his breath catch in his throat.

His anger evaporates into the heat. "What is it?"

"You don't hear that?"

Dean speaks in a breathy, rough tone saved for pretty women and those things that go bump in the night of Dean's mind. It's the same Sam used in those short minutes outside his burning apartment when Dean held him and told him it wasn't his fault.

"Hear what?"

But Dean isn't listening to him anymore, and Sam's halfway off the ground when his brother takes off running, flashlight beam rocking up and down with the frantic swaying of his arms.

Sam stumbles, falls, and by the time he gets to his feet, he's alone in the dark desert rain.

--

When the rain started to fall somewhere between where California ended and Arizona began, it was Sam who showed surprise. Intellectual knowledge is different than experience and standing face to face with the improbably only brings awe. When he looked over to Dean, he expected a similar reaction one of surprise or amusement at the rare occurrence.

But this wasn't the first time rain had fallen in the desert, nor was it the first time Dean encountered it.

He'd been driving through Nevada, criss-crossing the state after a hunt, foot heavy on the gas, intent on putting as much distance between him and the trove of zombies he'd, thankfully, taken care of, as possible, the dull, dreary emptiness doing nothing to alleviate his own internal loneliness. Bruised and bloody, he wished again his father hadn't decided he was finally old enough to hunt on his own. Driving alone with only an occasional car to keep him company brought forth such weak thoughts, and when the red and blue lights flashed through the rain in his rear view mirror, he was almost thankful for the company. If not the attention.

Begrudgingly, he pulled off to the side of the highway and shifted into park. Bones aching from his most recent solo encounter, he leaned back in the seat, head falling to rest on the headrest, and wondered what he'd done this time to warrant such unwanted attention.

A rap-tap-tap hits the window beside him startled him, and he opened his eyes. The officer was wearing plastic over his hat to keep it from getting wet; the shape reminded him of those Smoky the Bear posters from elementary school. Weary, he rolled down the window.

"Hey there, officer," he said, trying on some charm. "Let me guess, I was speeding again."

If the officer was amused, he didn't show it. Just shined his flashlight over the black interior, light casting odd shadows over the familiar landscape. His search grated on Dean's patience, as it should, and he hoped it was nothing more than a ticket and a warning kind of stop, and not the sort that would have him running from the law after a hasty search of the Impala's trunk.

"Are you aware your tail light is out?" the officer asked with slow, drawn out words.

Dean frowned and turned his head out the window, rain falling into his hair; he could feel the blood dried to the side of his head washing off onto the pavement near the officer's feet. He allowed a moment to enjoy the cleansing desert rain, then pulled back his attention to the tail light.

A parting gift from his latest conquest came in the form of a busted light.

His smile was weak when he looked back at the officer. He should have been able to catch those things, keep himself from attracting attention. But the run had been for his life; one man was never meant to take all this on by himself.

Dean had no other choice.

--

The rain is tapering off, but doesn't fall to a gentle drizzle – that, Sam thinks, would help. After a haphazard trek back to the car – and really, he was surprised he was able to find it in the dark – he walks back down the way he thinks Dean disappeared armed with a flashlight and handgun. Navigation's hard with no sense of which way is up, so he tries his best, trusts his instincts. There was no map tucked in the glove compartment for Sam to check other than the thin US road map that gave the major highways and interstates, but nothing more.

The rubber in his sneakers squeaks each time he takes a step, water trapped in soaked socks and old shoes, but he ignores both – wet shoes are the least of his worries. They can be replaced, Dean can't.

Sam keeps that in mind with each step.

Swinging his flashlight beam wide right and left, he hopes to come upon Dean, laughing at how bad he got his little brother back for staying in the car while he braved the rain to check out the engine.

That would be normal, and since the car stopped, it's been anything but.

Maybe he is a chronic worrier like Dean says; he certainly finds himself doing it more and more the longer he spends on the road with his older sibling. A day hadn't gone by when Sam wasn't thinking about what his brother was up to, what he was hunting. In those late hours when he couldn't sleep, even safe and comfortable snuggled next to Jess, he worried about the possibility that, lying there, he might be the last member of his family alive. Because who would think to call him if the rest of his family died while hunting down some stupid thing?

Now, all those thoughts are being put to good use, and instead of lying there miles away, unable to do anything to help, he was walking across the desert during a freak rainstorm wondering who or what the fuck had gotten into his brother's head.

The sand doesn't crunch under his feet like it should, just splats and squishes, spreading out around each step to leave a visible trail – _don't leave behind any evidence you were there_ – another lesson from his ever-absent father, and like everything else the man told him, Sam ignores it as he walks on.

Past cactus and brush plants and dead bushes until his foot steps and expects to land just ahead of the other firmly on the ground – it doesn't, and he teeter-totters for a few seconds before regaining his balance.

Sweeping his flashlight down, Sam swears. A canyon. A deep canyon.

"Hell," he says to himself, "how I loved those days when a road trip didn't end with a fucking canyon in the middle of nowhere."

Sam takes a last look around before something tells him, _down_.

His clothes are already soaked, he thinks, so how can a climb down the side of the canyon hurt?

--

Jess laughed as she held his baseball hat out the window of her hand-me-down Toyota, blond hair blowing in the wind created by every window in the small car being rolled down. Her lack of air conditioning trumped his complete lack of car all together, and both wore matching sheens of sweat despite the constant breeze.

"C'mon," Sam pleaded, but didn't move from his seat. "Give it back."

"No way, buddy. I can't believe you wear this thing, anyway. How much more generic could you get?" Jess shot back. She wrinkled her nose at the thought and shook her head. "But if you must."

She handed it back, then returned her hand to the wheel.

"Thanks," Sam deadpanned, putting the dark blue hat back on over unruly hair. "And it's not generic," he continued, "everybody wears one." Everyone he'd seen on TV during his childhood, the shows his only source of what was considered normal.

"Yeah, the jocks. Why would you want to be normal, anyway?" she challenged. "It's so boring."

"You would know," he joked. "Cheerleader, sorority girl, what's next?"

"Hey! I learned the error of my ways. Just trying to pass on my wisdom."

Sam didn't say anything. Leave it to him to find the one girl in school who disliked normality. Even if she was pretty cute, he found himself clamming up whenever she challenged his complete and encompassing normality, the shell created in rebellion fragile, incomplete.

Normal was safe. Normal was stable and predictable. And he liked it.

Jess, on the other hand, didn't.

She pouted as she passed a car and swerved back into the left lane. "Oh, I'm sorry. You don't have to get all mopey. If you want to wear a hat like the lame boys, then you do that. You'll fit in perfectly with my brothers."

He threw the hat out the window. After all, who wanted to be compared to their girlfriend's _brothers_?

--

Whatever it is, it has to be related to the Pied Piper because that's the only way Dean would consciously follow something completely and utterly fake.

After all that prep, the song leaves him alone at the bottom of the canyon, left side of his face pressing into the mud, one arm stuck underneath him, the other skimming the river, current passing through numb fingers.

Dean groans and tries to push up with the hand stuck under him; he hovers a few inches off the ground, then falls back to the mud with a loud thwack. It splashes up into his eyes, and if his other hand would fucking listen to him, it would get it's ass out of the river and wipe this shit out of his face because damn if muddy sand doesn't sting when thrown into your eyes.

It doesn't. Dean grumbles, this time out of frustration with himself, and takes a deep, calming breath.

Wasn't that just like his life, though? Something familiar comes around, says hi, starts to strike up a conversation, and the second he begins to trust it and open up, it runs the fuck away and leaves him all alone at the bottom of a canyon.

Well, maybe not the canyon part, but if he wanted to get metaphorical with it, the canyon would probably represent his mood after such a thing happened.

He tries again to get up, because this bastard's going down after putting him through all this shit. Using his mom's voice – how low could you possibly go to do something like _that_ to a guy?

His second attempt is only mildly more successful than his first, but it allows the trapped arm enough room to get free. When he wipes the sand and mud from his eyes – and hell, does that feel good – he blinks a few times. Didn't he lose his flashlight when he ungracefully fell over the side, still following that damn voice? And if so, why does he see its beam a few hundred feet ahead hovering on the side of the canyon?

Think, you fucking idiot. That's not your flashlight. Dean's stomach drops, because he knows it's Sam trying to get down there, and if the thing used a song to lure Dean to the canyon floor, and all sprawled like something just waiting for the buzzards to come, what is it going to use on his little brother?

--

"Sorry about that, officer," Dean said smoothly. "I've been on kinda a long road trip; it must have gotten hit at a rest stop or something."

"Sure, son. Let's see some ID and registration."

Shit. He rarely used his own license for anything; it sat wedged in the back of one of the card slots in his wallet, behind half a dozen fake IDs, not all of which are licenses. His wallet was as damning as the spare tire space in the trunk, and if this guy kept his beam where it was, there was no way Dean could dig out an acceptable ID without him seeing all the rest of them.

Registration, that he could do. Snapping off his seatbelt, Dean leaned over the ever-empty passenger seat littered with empty fast food containers and discarded research to pop open the glove box. The contents weren't exactly good, but if he didn't move a stack of photographs, the cop wouldn't see the small automatic stashed in there – a gun permit was one thing he'd never thought of doctoring. He shifted through the photos and papers and some old dried out gum before his fingers felt the perforated edge of the Impala's recent registration card. Thank God someone thought of paper clipping the insurance information to it, or else he'd really be screwed.

A bundle of photos fell to the ground when he pulled the registration out; he ignored them as he struck up his smile and handed the items to the cop.

"I know that card's out of date," he said pointing to the insurance, "but the policy's good. I renewed that a few weeks ago after some prick rear ended me."

The cop leaned back on his heels to take a look at the rear bumper.

"Got it fixed, though. Good as new."

The officer nodded and walked back to his own car. Leaning back in his seat, Dean let out a nervous breath he didn't know he'd been holding all that time and let his body fall back, loose and exhausted limbs landing where they may. In the rear view mirror, he could see the officer typing in his information into that little computer they had now. Tap tap – he started the bass beat for Bron-Yr-Aur on the steering before tired eyes noticed the fallen photos.

With the cop concentrating on his computer screen, Dean leaned over and grabbed them. The rubber band snapped off with the flick of his finger, bouncing off somewhere in the car, but he didn't notice because he was looking at the photos of him and Sammy a few years before everything fell apart, the pair of them looking mighty happy after a hunt. Past the blood and dirt.

As he flipped through the collection of pictures, he's hit with the overwhelming memory of family. With Dad missing, he'd debated the need to ask for Sammy's help, if only so he didn't have to do this alone. Staring at the photos, the balance tipped, and he realized how futile the debate was. Sam was his brother.

Leave it to that little shit to stash something sentimental in the glove box beside a gun and fake IDs. He never could help himself when it came to putting something normal somewhere everyone else would think appropriate but the Winchesters would find odd.

--

Sam jumps down the last few feet to the riverbed and sways a bit to the right from landing on uneven ground. The canyon isn't that deep here, only a few hundred feet from floor to ceiling, but it could be worse – flicking his flashlight around, trying to find something vaguely Dean-shaped, he can see the decline the river takes to his right, canyon walls growing taller as it deepens. He can almost make out an old bridge, but it's too far and dark to know anything for sure.

Sam starts to walk along the riverbank with the current, thinking if his idiot brother fell into the river, he'd end up somewhere down river. _Squish, squash_. His flashlight sweeps the area as he was taught until something jumps out from the expected landscape. Squinting, Sam focuses his light across the river; the beam catches on a face he's only seen in photographs, and he lets out a strangled cry of surprise because he's never seen his mother face to face.

--

The house in New Mexico looked like those houses he'd seen in movies; adobe walls of pale beige with a red roof of clay made of those scooped tiles that looked like macaroni when laid on their sides. Sam tilted his head to side, turning the frowns into a stack of C's before Jess thumped him on the back and giggled as her parents came out of the house.

Couldn't get more normal than meeting your girlfriend's parents, right?

Summer vacation brought with it the opportunity for the couple to get away from school, both opting not to take classes over the summer; they'd caught up, Sam on his pre-law, Jess on her photography, and two weeks into suffocating boredom, she'd suggested a trip down to her parent's house.

"Don't worry, sweetie," she'd said when Sam's face blanched a bit, "I don't expect to ever meet your family."

Part of him was sad at that, but a larger part, the rebellious half struggling for a true north, smiled.

Sam was pleased she wanted to take him home with her over the summer even though they'd only been dating for six months or so, but she said it was time; her mother had been asking about him the last few weeks, and she blamed that on her inability to stop bragging about her sweet, cute, smart boyfriend.

How could he resist such an invitation?

Jess's mother looked just like her, with wavy blond hair and a thin figure. Her father was smiling and happy, both parents catching her in a smothering hug when she walked up to them, and Sam, for a moment, wondered what that felt like.

The next minute, Jess was introducing him. "Mom, Dad, this is Sam."

And he learned what it felt like to have parents give him a simple, no catch hug.

--

Only Sam's that tall and goofy looking, Dean decides, and with his free hand, he levers himself up onto an elbow to get a better view of his gawky brother and whatever's caught his attention.

He's standing at the edge of the river, flashlight pointed straight ahead, posture rigid as he looked at something – and whatever it is, Dean can't see it.

"Hey, Sammy!" he shouts. "Over here, asshole!"

Sam doesn't turn, doesn't even move to acknowledge he heard Dean at all. Must be the rushing river, Dean tells himself, that's why Sam didn't hear him.

When Sam starts wading into the river, Dean's had enough of being ignored.

"God damnit, Sam," he huffs, pushing up with his right arm. His left remains unresponsive at his side, and when Dean manages to get to his feet, his right ankle buckles under the strain and sends him pitching forward; honed reflexes keep him from taking another header into the ground, and the second time he gets to his feet, he leans on his left foot and begins to hobble experimentally in Sam's direction.

Each step jars his broken left arm; the wetness he originally thought was water smells more coppery than fresh. Dean curls it in against his chest and limps slowly, vision wavering in and out as he slowly, painfully, makes his way up river.

An unseen rock threatens his fragile balance and he hisses through a spike of hot pain.

But he didn't go all that way to get Sam only to have the kid drown in a river right in front of him.

-

She stands on the other side of the river, arms extended in a loving embrace, waiting for Sam to reach her. He looks down at the river near his feet, back up at her, then the river, and something goes out in his brain. He begins walking into the water, through the current, his eyes locked on the figure waiting for him. It controls him, compels him as he wades through the rushing water, one foot in front of the other. When his hands fall below the waterline, the light trained on the figure goes out.

With nothing illuminating the bank, there's nothing standing there to beckon him across, to control him. His feet sink into the riverbed, and when Sam blinks and realizes he's in the river, it's a bit too late to turn around and walk back out.

Panic bubbles inside him when his feet don't slide easily from the loose sand, and he tries to get one foot dislodged, tugging up on it until it slides out of his shoe and leaves him flailing in the river; he falls backwards into the current, one foot acting like an anchor keeping him in place as he claws at the water and tries to get up above the current.

Sam struggles to get back to the surface, his lungs burning, unprepared and empty. Pushes his torso up as best he can, and he feels air tickle the tip of his nose, but it's not enough. His head's getting all woozy, concentration growing more elusive the longer he's under. He reaches up, feels air on his fingers –

-- then a hand grasping them hard and pulling up on them with a sharp jolt.

Sam comes up to the surface with a huge, rattling gasp. He coughs and sputters, both feet now free from the mud, and he weakly kicks to shore, the hand pulling and directing him since his eyes have gone all blurry.

"Damnit, Sam, do I always have to save your ass?"

Flopping onto shore, Sam smirks. "Thanks, jerk. It's your fault I was down here in the first place. Crazy, much?" After his lungs have had their fill and his heartbeat isn't filling his ears, he listens to Dean's pained, rushed breathing.

"Look who's talking," Dean almost whispers. "What the fuck possessed you to wade into a river in the dark?"

"I thought I saw…" And Sam shakes his head because it wasn't possible. Was it?

"Yeah, I did, too," Dean admits in a rare moment of openness. "Well, heard."

"Wait, what?" Sam asks. He leans up onto his elbows and blinks a few times until his vision finally clears and he can see Dean lying on the shore beside him, left arm thrown over his chest, his face scrunched in pain. The arm's bent oddly, at least looks like it in the weak light coming from the overcast moon.

"Need a picture book, Sammy? Geeze. You okay?"

"Are you?"

Dean motions weakly to his arm. "Remember how to set a bone?"

"Unfortunately," Sam winces. He leans over, intent on inspecting his brother's arm, when a wail screeches through the night, long and full of the heartache both brothers are feeling after such a close brush with their long-gone mother. "What the hell?"

Dean sits up, eyes scanning the other side of the river. "Shit. What'dya say we get the hell out of Dodge and figure this shit out later?"

A few poor attempts at walking on his own, and Sam's gripping his brother around the waist, surprised when Dean gives over most of his weight to Sam's support.

"What the hell is that?" Sam comments. Against his shoulder, he can feel Dean shake his head.

"Dunno…banshee maybe? Some kind of Washer Woman. Can we save this and get out of here? I'm fucking soaked and tired from saving your scrawny behind."

"Shut up, Dean."

"You shut up, Sammy."

"It's Sam now."

"I know you are," Dean smirks, climbing up the side of the canyon as best he can with Sam's help, "but what am I?"

"An asshole."

"Oh, Sammy, I love you, too. Give me a hug."

Shock must be setting in, because Dean tackles him in a hug as they reach the top that sends the pair teetering across the road just as a truck comes barreling down, headlights catching them like deer as it screeches to a stop. Still locked in the hug, the brothers look up at the truck, wondering how, after all that, they ended up back on the highway.

The driver shouts out the window. "Either of you own that car I saw back there?"

"Yeah, man. She okay?" Dean shouts back in kind.

"Looks a little lonely out there on the side of the road. You break something?"

"Serpentine belt."

"There's a good shop in Flagstaff, make you right as rain. Get in, I'm headed that way."

With his ankle refusing to support any weight and his strength wavering as adrenaline washes from his system, Dean stands next to the door. Exhausted from the climb – and fuck if they weren't lucky they ended up near a shallow end of the whole damn deep canyon – he leans against the vibrating truck and glances at Sam.

"Oh, God, Dean. Do I have to help you now? Because I don't know if I can, seeing as you had to go through so much trouble to save me," Sam says.

"Shut up and help me," Dean shoots back. "You leave me here, and who'll save you next time you decide to do something stupid?"

Sam laughs and steps up to open the door, rain still coming down like the far reaching arms of a summer sprinkler set on the lawn. Without the rain and the sound and the possibility of drowning, it's a bit chillier, and Sam's thankful for the warmth of the truck's cab. He leans down and pulls Dean up just as Dean must have pulled him out of the river; he lands in the middle, Dean falls in next to him, and after a second, pulls the door closed.

"Damn, what happened out there?" the driver asks. The truck lurches under them as he speaks, chugging up to speed along the interstate, wipers swishing back and forth over the large windshield. Static plays off the CB, voices poking through every once and awhile, but for the most part, there's no one else around for miles.

"Got lost in the rain," Dean says slowly through a yawn.

"They don't call it Canyon Diablo for nothing."

"Canyon Diablo." Sam deadpans. For some reason, that doesn't surprise him in the least.

"Yep. Once was a place worse than Tombstone and Dodge City. Lots of gunslingers and murders and such before it dried up. Lots of places around here like that. Ghost towns and such. Luck must look over you boys; could've fallen somewhere worse."

"There's someplace worse?"

"There's always someplace worse. Strange things happen in the rain."

Learn something new everyday. Sam turns to Dean, concerned by his uncharacteristic silence and finds him wedged up against the door, eyes closed, face drawn. The way his arm's just hanging there over his lap worries Sam, and when he moves to get a better look at it, a single hazel eye cracks open.

"It's fine," he rasps, but the wince he tries to hide when attempting to sit up betrays him.

"You're such an idiot," Sam sighs. "Do you mind if I turn on a light? I think my brother here broke his arm."

"Sure thing, kid."

With the overhead light illuminating the large cab, Sam spies the ladder to a sleeping deck behind the bench seat before looking back down at Dean. Hazel eyes blink up at him, pupils shrinking in the light.

"Who turned on the light?" he asks.

Sam's careful as he holds Dean's left arm in his hands. "Bet this hurts," he says. Dean grits his teeth and takes a few labored breaths as he tries to look tough.

"Naw. Just itches a bit."

"Who's the bigger idiot? The one walking into the river, or the guy who breaks his arm?"

"Touché," he whispers through tight lips. His face is so pale, Sam's sure he'll pass out before they're halfway to Flagstaff.

There's blood mixed with sand, and he hopes there's more than just a good mechanic in Flagstaff because this thing's going to get infected if they don't clean it out soon. "How's the ankle?" He gives Dean a moment to collect himself, gulp down a few greedy breaths, before asking again.

"Sprained."

"Sure?"

"Hell, yeah, Sammy. What about you?"

Sam shrugs. "Headache."

Dean's eyes are already closing again after a brief struggle to stay open, and Sam reaches up to turn off the light.

"You heard her, didn't you boys?" the driver asks. "La Llorona, the washing woman. Don't let children and lost boys out at night down here, that's what they say, or she'll draw you to your death."

"Told you," Dean says softly.

"I thought washing women were, you know, found places other than here," Sam tries. The driver shakes his head. Static crackles as they skate close to a pair of laughing drivers.

"Story changes depending on who you're talking to. La Llorona was a woman who lived a long time ago. Some say her new husband wanted nothing to do with her boys from her first marriage, others that she was a whore who couldn't get jobs at night because that meant leaving the boys alone. Doesn't matter how, just that she drowned those boys in the river one night, and now is cursed to wander them and such searching for those boys. Each time she finds a kid without a mom, she pulls 'em close and tries to drown 'em. Don't know about that logic, but hell, she's a damn ghost or something."

Sam flops back in the seat, head resting on the top, and closes his eyes. All places had their own versions of universal stories – despite Dean's teasing, he did learn something in college. An unexplainable yearning for home, or family, had him taking a mythology class his sophomore year, many of the stories recognizable in less elegant terms related to him under the cover of night and whispers by his father or Dean. Humanity works on universal terms and themes, and just as the Welsh had the Washing Woman, the Spanish of the southwest had La Llorona.

The ride to Flagstaff isn't too long, but he'd never want to walk it. It's spent mostly in silence, the driver occasionally picking up the CB to shout a greeting at nearby comrades in arms. Sam can feel Dean through his drying t-shirt, the pair sitting shoulder to shoulder, and wonders if he had it all wrong. Maybe he'd never missed out on normal or hugs from loving parents because he had something better and it's sitting next to him.

Even if Dean does snore.

--

Arm casted, ankle set, Dean stands next to his baby in the parking lot of the mechanic's shop recommended by the driver, leaning slightly against the window. Two days sees the ground as dry as expected and the sky's clear of any threatening storm clouds, leaving the sun to bake all under it.

The keys jingle in Sam's hands as he opens the door and slides in. Dean lingers a moment, taking in the warmth of the normal, expected desert, before doing the same. His knees butt up against the glove box and its hidden treasures shoved next to fake IDs and that same small handgun.

"You know, we could always go back, see if we can find her," Sam suggests.

"Naw. Some stories are there for a reason."

"What, to keep kids from wandering alone in the desert?"

"Hell, yeah. Look what happened to experienced guys like us."

Backing down from a fight isn't Dean's style, even if he's a little battered after the encounter, and Sam's about to call him on it when he remembers what got them into the whole mess in the first place. When he closes his eyes against the invading sun, he can see his mother's face on the other side of the riverbank, and wonders, for a moment, what La Lorona used to sway a tough, experienced hunter like Dean.

Perhaps, in the long run, this one can remain.

"Sure, Dean."

They turn east and continue on along Interstate 40, away from California and the burnt apartment and the dead girlfriend, and this time, the ghost who likes to snatch motherless boys and claim them as their own. The air conditioner hums along with the radio set on low; Dean finds it comforting. He's tempted to take those pictures out of the glove box, but why look at them when he's got the real thing sitting next to him? Maybe he never was really alone, not like he thought when dad started going off on his own to leave him his own hunts, maybe he just had to remember those pictures sitting in the glove box and that his brother was there, even if he weren't physically next to him.

Which, Dean thinks, might have been okay. Because the kid drives for shit.


End file.
